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Angola pledges to keep using Nations Cup stadiums

1 February 2010 12:00

LUANDA (AFP) - Angola's sports minister on Monday pledged to ensure a profitable future for the four new football stadiums which were built for the Africa Cup of Nations at a cost of 600 million dollars.

"The management of the stadiums is a big concern of the government," Goncalves Muandumba told state-owned national radio.

"We need to take steps so they don't become a deadly weight on the state, so special attention will be paid to how they are used, their maintenance and their profitability."

The minister said a working group had been collecting ideas for over a year from a number of other countries including Portugal, Spain, Germany, South Africa and France, and the plan for Angola was to create a public company to oversee the running of the four stadiums, he said.

A number of the basketball pavilions built for the 2007 Afrobasket tournament have started to fall into disrepair, but deputy sports minister Albino da Conceicao told AFP the government had learnt its lesson and would ensure the football stadiums were properly maintained.

Angola spent more than one billion dollars on hosting the 21-day football tournament which was won by Egypt, who picked up their seventh tournament trophy.

The four new stadiums were built by Chinese construction companies in the provinces of Luanda, Benguela, Lubango and Cabinda.